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This article discusses the dynamic interaction between global policy and knowledge flows and two post-communist education systems -Hungary and Romania -with special attention to the appropriation of post-bureaucratic regulation tools and the structural changes enhanced by the knowledge transmitted by the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) survey. First, through the lens of the socio-history of educational assessments, the varieties of state socialist education systems are detailed in order to contextualise the subsequent discussion about the entry of the two countries into the PISA survey and the national institutional changes generated by PISA. After the thematic comparison of the country case studies, the article concludes that the two cases do not allow the conceptualisation of a single post-socialist model of PISA reception, but, on the contrary, the international comparative framework of PISA offers an opportunity to critically interrogate the complex processes of convergence and divergence in the study of globalisation, and to elaborate a differentiated perspective on post-socialist education systems and governance strategies.

The study focuses on the 21st century practices of religion of a traditionally religious community. The study was carried out in a small town in Székely Land, Miercurea Ciuc or Csíkszereda, where the social changes are rather slow compared to the centres, however the religious changes are marked by the territory’s homogenous and outstanding religious character. The study offers a brief theoretical review of the causes of the social changes in the religious practices, after that presents the town’s external-premodern and internal-modern religious practitioners